A Poem For Today - The Octopus Prophet
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The Octopus Prophet
I saw a small pink octopus on Judgment Day.
It was painted on the chapel wall amid frescoed waves,
the work of an island amateur.
I saw it caught in the teleological crossfire
while bodies stood up from graves
as if from their bathtubs—surprised by strangers—
or when waking after dark from a long and poorly timed sleep.
On land, lions and griffins bore folk in many directions,
valiant in the service of an elaborate system
of blame. The octopus, familiar with the drowned,
hung amid scalloped waves like a cosmic hand towel,
pink and weirded by the artist’s hand.
Pressed against the occipital bulb of its head
was the head of a man, the face and some of the hair, and though
a caption in my guidebook said it was disgorging
the head, the octopus seemed rather to be drying it
gently, or bumping it along toward some vague reunion.
While men were dreaming of vindication and women
pleading guilty on all counts, I saw a new Heaven
and a new Earth. And I saw that blithe, pink octopus with eight arms
orchestrating nothing, eight arms of animalian
letting go—the only protagonist in that scenario.
Like the housefly that acts as a kind of prophet in a trompe l’oeil,
persuading us what we’re seeing is real.
Though of course, it isn’t. We know this especially
if the artist’s skill has failed, which in the case of the octopus,
as I said, it had. So I knew there was no afterlife
though all the hatches were flung open,
all the sorry bones unpacked for eternity. And in its mutinous
wisdom, from the stylized deep the octopus chided none of us
in particular when it cried amidst the waste and the glory
Have you lost your head? While the face—
the face just bumped along, furrowed in shame,
swept by a heinous collective dream.
Paula Closson Buck